


demons (i think i've lost my mind)

by AlexiaBlackbriar13



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 6x18 Related, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hallucinations, Season/Series 06, Suicidal Thoughts, family support, post 6x18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 10:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14330607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexiaBlackbriar13/pseuds/AlexiaBlackbriar13
Summary: He’s still there.The Vertigo has completely cleared his system and test results prove that.But Oliver is still hallucinating Adrian Chase.





	demons (i think i've lost my mind)

**Author's Note:**

> (please heed trigger warnings in tags)
> 
> i cant stop writing 6x18 related fics IM SORRY OK

He’s still there.

The Vertigo has completely cleared his system and test results prove that.

But Oliver is still hallucinating Adrian Chase.

It’s been two days since his lone wolf attempt to take out Diaz -  
two days since he was dosed with Vertigo and began hallucinating, his erratic behavior due to the substance causing tension between him, Felicity and William. He’s no longer being affected by the drug; all of the traces of it within his blood have vanished by now. For some reason, though, he continues to be plagued by visions of the psychopath who tore him to pieces emotionally last year.

Which means his problem isn’t pharmacological. It’s psychological. There’s something wrong with him mentally.

Oliver doesn’t know what to do. 

He wakes up in the morning with Felicity in his arms. Adrian is standing at the end of the bed, leering at them.

He works out in the bunker with Adrian slamming his bow repeatedly into the metal pipes, laughing at him mockingly.

He cooks dinner and has to force himself not to react when Adrian touches his family, brushing his hands over Felicity’s shoulders and stroking William’s hair.

The archer wants to cry. Constantly. Adrian tells him he’s broken, a murderer and a failure. He calls him _his beautiful Oliver_ and it makes Oliver want to cringe into himself until he disappears from existence. There’s barely a waking moment where the psychopath isn’t around him, and at night, Adrian seems to be determined to deprive the archer of sleep as much as possible. While Oliver lies in bed, desperately trying to get to sleep hours after his wife succumbed to slumber, it’s impossible to block out Adrian’s voice as he tells Oliver in explicit detail the horrors he’s going to inflict on Felicity and his son.

Adrian takes joy in yelling at Oliver while he’s in the middle of conversations with his wife or Quentin, shouting at the archer that he’s dirty, damaged, needs to kill himself to spare his loved ones from his poisonous presence. The worst part of it… is that Oliver can’t help but believe what Adrian is saying.

He feels like he’s in a bottomless tank of freezing water, darkness surrounding him. He's sinking. There’s no way to reach the surface as he slowly drowns, the heavy coldness entering and eating at his lungs.

Adrian screams at Oliver that he deserves to die, that he should hurt himself and put a bullet in his brain just like he did.

Oliver starts to want to.

 _I’m still hallucinating Adrian Chase_ , is all he has to say to Felicity. _He’s making me depressed and I want to hurt myself._ But he never gets the words out, because Adrian is there to tell him that he doesn’t deserve help, that Felicity will leave him if she finds out how awful and fractured a person he is, that he should be alone for the safety of others.

 _How do you expect her to help anyway_ , Adrian sneers at him. _This is all in YOUR mind, not hers. You’re the one who’s cracked. You’re the one who’s fucked up in the head._

He hates that Adrian is right.

The situation reaches crisis level a week after the hallucinations began.

“Just do it,” Adrian says, lounging on the couch in Felicity and Oliver’s apartment as he watches the archer prepare carbonara pasta for dinner that night. “You’ve got a knife right there in your hand. It would be so easy for you to just put the blade of it against your wrist and slash into the blood vessels there. Nearly effortless. Come on, Ollie. You know you want to..”

Oliver’s set himself his own rule not to talk to Adrian, to try and ignore him as much as possible. But tonight, he’s exhausted and running on fumes. He’s been dealing with the psychopath whispering ways he should kill himself all day. He can’t deal with this anymore. He’s going to break down if this doesn’t stop now. “Go away,” he grits out.

“You want me to go away? Here’s your solution: you can’t hallucinate me if you’re dead.”

“You’re not real. I’m not listening to you.”

“Really?” Adrian chuckles darkly. “Because you’re responding to me. That indicates to me that you’re listening pretty well.”

Swallowing, Oliver chops up the raw bacon for the pasta dish with more vigor than before, syncing his breathing to the slow slashes he makes into the meat with the knife.

Suddenly, Adrian is standing right beside him, breathing into his ear. The shock of it causes Oliver to whimper, flinching away from him. The knife clatters on to the kitchen counter. Dropping his head into his hands, he sobs as Adrian just laughs at him.

“Aw, it’s okay, Ollie,” Adrian says, fake pouting in sympathy. “I know it’s hard to be hallucinating me all the time. But you should probably get used to this, considering you’re going to be seeing me for the rest of your life. However long that may be.” The archer shudders as he feels Adrian’s fingers curl around the back of his neck. “You’re weak. You’re going to break soon, Ollie, and you’re going to kill yourself to get away from me. And then we’ll be together in death. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”

Oliver snaps. “JUST GO AWAY!” he screams, grabbing the knife and flinging it towards the man. It passes straight through the man, who flickers like a hologram as the blade lodges itself into the wall. “LEAVE ME ALONE! YOU’RE DEAD! YOU’RE NOT REAL!”

Adrian stares at him. The archer’s heart pounds in his chest and a nauseous feeling sweeps over him as a creepy, pleased smile crosses over the psychopath’s face. He disappears.

Barely a second later... he discovers why.

“Oliver?” Felicity whispers, horrified.

He turns to see her standing in the doorway, having just arrived back from picking William up from school. Their son is hiding behind her, his eyes as round as plates. Oliver doesn’t miss how both his wife and son’s gazes skip to the knife stuck out of the wall before focusing back on him. Felicity steps into the apartment cautiously, shepherding William in behind her but into the corner as she closes and locks the door.

Oliver remains silent and still, struggling to breathe and believe what exactly is happening as Felicity approaches him worriedly, her hands held up carefully in a placating way. She’s looking at him as if he might collapse any moment and needs to be comforted. As if he’s a spooked wild animal that needs to be calmed.

“What’s going on here, hun?” she asks, glancing over at the knife again. “You wanna talk to me? Tell me what’s happening?”

He shakes his head.

“It’s okay,” she says softly. “You’re safe here. There’s nobody here but us three.”

“No there’s not,” he manages.

“What?” She looks alarmed. “Oliver, did somebody break in?”

Physically into the apartment? No. Mentally, into his mind? The archer releases another whimper, so tired that he can’t contain his emotional turmoil anymore. “He won’t leave.”

“Who won’t?” she asks.

“Chase,” he whispers, tearing up.

Felicity’s eyes widen. “Oliver, have you been hallucinating Chase? Since the Vertigo? That was a week ago… have you been hallucinating this _whole time?_ ”

He presses the palms of his hands into his eyes, his legs giving out from under him. Falling to his knees, sobs tear out of his chest at full force, shaking his entire body as he begins to cry. He can’t do this. Oliver has been suffering because of Chase all week and while he’s relieved that Felicity and William both know now, there’s _nothing_ they can do to help him. They can’t stop this. They can’t get Chase to go away.

Hands on his back startle him, but once he realizes that his wife and son are kneeling in front of him, drawing him into their embrace, his crying intensifies and he just lets himself go. Felicity and William hold Oliver as he falls to pieces in their arms, resting his forehead on his wife’s shoulder as William tightens his hold on Oliver’s arm, helping to ground him to the present. Together, they soothe him; they tell him that it’s alright and that he’s safe with them, that Chase can’t hurt him anymore because they’ll protect him. Oliver doesn’t know if he necessarily believes him, but he feels secure as they hug him and after five minutes or so, settles down a little.

“Oh, baby,” Felicity cradles his face in her hands tenderly, kissing his cheeks. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“He keeps telling me to kill myself,” he admits quietly, hands clutching at Felicity’s shirt as he huddles close to her.

Her inhalation is stuttered. “Oliver… it’s not _him_ , it’s your subconscious -”

“I know,” he tells her, looking her directly in the eye. “I know. But it’s… it’s _his face_. It’s _him_. He’s the one talking to me, telling me that I need to die. And I’m scared because he’s convincing me that it’s a good idea.”

“Don’t believe him,” Felicity tells him. “You don’t _ever_ believe him, Oliver.”

“Why won’t he leave?” he murmurs, clenching his hands into fists in his hair. He yanks, reveling in the pain as he cries out, “I just want him to leave!”

To his surprise, it’s William who gently pulls at his fingers, stopping him from hurting himself. “Felicity and I will make sure he leaves,” he says, sounding so confident and certain of himself. “Tell us when he appears and we’ll yell at him until he goes away, Dad.”

Oliver looks up and fixes his eyes on Adrian, who is observing them with a smirk and raised eyebrows as he leans back against the window. Felicity and William must see the direction of his gaze because they turn around, facing the direction where Adrian is, but they obviously can’t see him.

“He’s there?” Felicity asks.

Oliver nods. “In front of the window,” he mumbles.

William rises to his feet and strides across the room until he’s standing in front of the window. He doesn’t realize it, but he’s only a few feet away from Adrian, who is eyeing the teenager with amusement.

“You’re not welcome here,” William says. His tone is strong, the authority and energy behind it remarkably intense. “You have _no power_ here. My dad beat you and you’re dead. He’s a hero. You leave him alone.”

Adrian looks impressed. He casts a glance over towards Oliver and Felicity before shrugging and disappearing.

Oliver is stunned. He would never have thought that would work. There’s a lump in his throat as he informs them in a raspy voice, “He’s gone.”

William nods, satisfied. He walks back over to them and throws his arms around his dad, hugging him tightly. “He’ll stay gone if he knows what’s good for him.”

Oliver was never able to get Chase to go away. William did it with a few simple sentences. He starts crying again. “Thank you.”

Felicity cuddles him to her, pulling William in from the side to get in on the hug action. “I’m going to call Dr. Schwartz,” she says. “If this is psychological, she might be able to help with some medication or something. We’ll get him to leave for good, Oliver. I promise you. He’ll never bother you again.”

“Thank you,” he repeats, because it definitely bears repeating.

“You always protect us,” William says. “Now it’s our turn to protect you.”

And they do.

Felicity and William always make sure that one of them is with Oliver at all times, and if they can’t be, then they ask Quentin to be, who they inform of the continuing hallucinations. Whenever Adrian appears, Oliver immediately tells whoever is with them and they shout at the psychopath until he vanishes. Because of their help, Adrian never gets to speak to him again, until the very last day of the hallucinations - the day that Oliver goes onto the antidepressants and medication that stop them from occurring.

Adrian pops into view as Oliver holds the first pill in his hand.

“You’ll never get rid of me,” he tells Oliver. “No stupid pill is ever going to free you of me. I’ll always be with you, Ollie. I’ll always stay with you, in there.” He points at the archer’s head and his heart.

“Goodbye, Adrian,” Oliver says, smiling at him. He swallows the pill.

He knows that the effects aren’t immediate at all, and they won’t stop the hallucinations instantly.

But Adrian disappears.

“We beat you,” Oliver says.

Felicity slips her hand into his and squeezes his fingers. William does the same his other side and rests his head against his father’s arm.

“We’ll always beat you.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed
> 
> twitter: @lexiblackbriar  
> tumblr: @alexiablackbriar


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